J.D. Salinger, the reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye, has died at 91, his agent said on Thursday, raising tantalizing questions over whether the legendary writer might have left behind a hoard of unpublished works.
Salinger died on Wednesday of natural causes at his home in New Hampshire, the Harold Ober Associates literary agency in New York said.
Born in 1919, Salinger earned a place as one of the giants of 20th century US fiction. His 1951 tale of teenage rebellion, The Catcher in the Rye, became a cultural icon, making him rich and famous, but overwhelmed by his sudden fame, he retreated to a hermit-like existence in Cornish, New Hampshire. He published his last work in the New Yorker magazine in 1965 and refused to give interviews for the last three decades of his life.
Fiercely guarding his privacy, he turned to the courts to stop publication of his letters and steadfastly refused offers to sell the movie rights to Catcher.
Just last July, a US judge suspended the publication of an unauthorized sequel to Catcher by Swedish author Fredrik Colting.
Salinger’s death has reignited speculation over whether he may have left behind some valuable works that could be published posthumously.
The author himself revealed in a 1980 interview with the Boston Sunday Globe that he was still producing — albeit not for an audience.
“I love to write and I assure you I write regularly, but I write for myself and I want to be left absolutely alone to do it,” he said.
Roger Lathbury, whose Orchises publishing house acquired, then lost, the rights in the 1990s to publish in hardback Salinger’s Hapworth 16, 1924 said the literary world is holding its breath.
“Nobody knows how much there is of it, nobody knows what it’s like, nobody knows,” Lathbury said. “I assume the works, the work that he produced after his last published story in 1965, I assume they’ve been preserved. They then became part of his literary estate, which will be administrated by whoever his will designates.”
The market for any posthumous Salinger writings would likely be highly lucrative.
Letters he wrote to his young lover, Joyce Maynard, with whom he started a year-long relationship in 1972, sold for more than US$150,000 at auction in 1999.
In Hollywood, there is particularly intense interest in making a film of Catcher, a novel that sold more than 60 million copies worldwide and entered American pop culture, being referenced in everything from movies to songs and other books.
Reading the book “used to be an essential rite of passage, almost as important as getting your learner’s permit,” the New York Times wrote on Thursday. “The novel’s allure persists to this day.”
The New Yorker magazine, which published much of Salinger’s output, said “The Catcher in the Rye was the “purest extract” of the sense of disappointment for Americans who had grown up in the 1950s. The main character, Holden Caulfield, “is their sorrow king.”
Even John Lennon’s 1980 murderer, Mark Chapman, homed in on Catcher after his crime, saying it “holds many answers.”
Repeated attempts have been made to film the novel and portray Caulfield, reportedly including by the BBC and movie moguls Steven Spielberg and Harvey Weinstein, but each time they were rebuffed by Salinger.
His antipathy to film adaptations is said to have been triggered by Hollywood’s treatment of his short story Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut.
Jerome David Salinger was born on New Year’s Day 1919 in Manhattan, New York, the son of an Irish mother and Jewish father with Polish roots.
As a teenager he began writing stories. In 1940, his debut story The Young Ones about several aimless youths was published in Story magazine.
Then came America’s entry into World War II and the young Salinger was drafted in 1942. He took part in the D-Day landings and his wartime experiences are said to have marked him for life.
He married a German woman after the war, but the marriage fell apart after just a few months, and Salinger renewed his writing with a passion.
In 1948 he published the short story A Perfect Day for Bananafish in the New Yorker, bringing him acclaim and introducing the Glass family and its seven rambunctious children — Seymour Buddy, Boo Boo, Walt, Waker, Zooey and Franny — who were to populate several of his short stories.
It was The Catcher in the Rye published three years later, however, that sealed his reputation.
Sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield’s adventures and musings as he makes his way home after being kicked out of school touched a raw nerve and have fascinated generations of disaffected youngsters.
The novel was also sharply criticized for its liberal use of swear words and open references to sex, and it was banned in some countries.
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